Hemlock Bay

by Catherine Coulter

  Everyone was high, excited. They’d gotten the boys back safely. They’d taken down two psychopaths.

  Tammy Tuttle was conscious again, screaming, no way to keep the boys from hearing her, though he tried. They held her down on the floor. She was yelling and cursing at Savich as she cradled her arm, yelling that the Ghouls would get him, she would lead them to him, that he was dead meat, and so were those Little Bloods. Savich felt the boys nearly dissolve against him, their terror palpable.

  Then one of the agents slammed his fist into her jaw. He looked up, grinning. “Took her out of her pain. Didn’t like to see such a fine, upstanding young lady in such misery.”

  “Thank you,” Savich said. “Rob, Donny, she’s not going to hurt anyone ever again. I swear it to you.” Sherlock came to him, and she looked angry enough to spit nails. She didn’t say anything, just put her arms around the two boys.

  The paramedics came through with stretchers. Big Bob, the lead, who had a twenty-two-inch neck, looked at the two agents comforting the boys and just held up his hand. He said to the three men behind him, “Let’s just wait here a moment. I think these boys are getting the medicine they need right now. See to that woman. The guy is gone.”

  Three hours later, the old barn was finally empty again, all evidence, mainly food refuse, pizza boxes, some chains and shackles, a good four dozen candy bar wrappers, carted away. Both Tuttles had been removed, Tammy still alive. The boys were taken immediately to their parents, who were waiting at the sheriff’s office in Stewartville, Maryland. From there they’d go on to the local hospital to be checked out. The FBI wouldn’t need to speak to them again for at least a couple of days, giving them time to calm down before being questioned.

  All the agents drove back to FBI headquarters, to the Criminal Apprehension Unit on the fifth floor, to write up their reports.

  Everyone was bouncing off the walls. They’d won. High fives, slaps on the back. No screwups, no false leads. They hadn’t been too late to save the boys. “Just look at all the testosterone flying around,” Sherlock said as she walked into the office. Then she laughed. No one could talk about anything but how Savich had brought them down.

  Savich called all the agents who had participated in the raid together.

  “When the barn doors swung in, did anyone see anything?”

  No one had seen a thing.

  “Did anyone see anything strange coming out of the barn, anything at all?”

  There wasn’t a word spoken around the big conference table. Then Sherlock said, “We didn’t see anything, Dillon. The barn doors flew inward; there was some thick dust in the air, but that was it.” She looked around at the other agents. No one had seen any more than that. “We didn’t see anything coming out of the barn either.”

  “The Tuttles called them Ghouls,” Savich said slowly. “They looked so real I actually shot at one of them. It was then that they seemed to dissipate, to disappear. I’m being as objective as I can. Understand, I didn’t want to see anything out of the ordinary. But I did see something. I want to believe that it was some sort of dust devil that broke into two parts, but I don’t know, I just don’t know. If anyone can come up with an explanation, I’d like to hear it.”

  There were more questions, more endless speculation, until everyone sat silent. Savich said to Jimmy Maitland, “The boys saw them. They’re telling everyone about them. You can bet that Rob and Donny won’t call them natural phenomena or dust devils.”

  Jimmy Maitland said, “No one will believe them. Now, we’ve got to keep this Ghoul business under wraps. The FBI has enough problems without announcing that we’ve seen two supernatural cones, for God’s sake, in a rampaging partnership with two psychopaths.”

  Later, Savich realized while he was typing his report to Jimmy Maitland that he’d spelled “Ghouls” with a capital G. They weren’t just general entities to the Tuttles; they were specific.

  Sherlock followed Savich into the men’s room some thirty minutes later. Ollie Hamish, Savich’s second in command, was at the sink washing his hands when they came in.

  “Oh, hi, guys. Congratulations again, Savich. Great work. I just wish I could have been with you.”

  “I’m glad to see a man washing his hands,” Sherlock said, and poked him in the arm. “In a few minutes I’m going to be washing my hands, too. After I’ve beaten some sense into my husband here, the jerk. Go away, Ollie, I know you’ll want to protect him from me, and I don’t want to have to hurt both of you.”

  “Ah, Sherlock, he’s a hero. Why do you want to hurt the hero? He saved those little boys from the Warlocks and the Ghouls.”

  Savich said, “After what I told you about them, do you spell ‘Ghouls’ with a capital G in your head?”

  “Yeah, sure, you said there were two of them. It’s one of those strange things that will stay with you. You sure you weren’t smoking something, Savich? Inhaling too much stale hay?”

  “I wish I could say yes to that.”

  “Out, Ollie.”

  Once they were alone, she didn’t take a strip off him, just stepped against him and wrapped her arms around his back. “I can’t say that I’ve never been more frightened in my life, since you and I have managed to get into some bad situations.” She kissed his neck and squeezed him even tighter. “But today, at that damned barn, you were a hot dog, and I was scared spitless, as were your friends.”

  “There was no time,” he said against her curly hair. “No time to bring you in. Jesus, I scared myself, but I had no choice. And then those howling wind things were there. I honestly can’t say which scared me more—Tammy Tuttle or whatever it was she called the Ghouls.”

  She pulled back a bit. “I really don’t understand any of that. You described it all so clearly I could almost see them whirling through those barn doors. But Ghouls?”

  “That’s what the Tuttles called them. It was like they were acolytes to these things. I’d really like to say it was some sort of hallucination, that I was the only one who freaked out, but the boys saw them, too. I know it sounds off the wall, Sherlock, particularly since none of you guys saw a thing.”

  Because he needed to speak of it more, she just held him while he again described what had burst through the barn doors. Then he said, “I don’t think there’s anything more to do about this, but it was scary, Sherlock, really.”

  Jimmy Maitland walked into the men’s room.

  “Hey, where’s a man to piddle?”

  “Oh, sir, I just wanted to check Dillon out, make sure he was okay.”

  “And is he?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Ollie caught me in the hall on my way to the unit, Savich, said you were getting the bejesus whaled out of you in the men’s room. We’ve got a media frenzy cranking up.” Jimmy Maitland gave them a big grin. “Guess what? No one’s going to pound on us this time—only good news, thank the Lord. Great news. Since you were the one in the middle of it, Savich, we want you front and center. Of course, Louis Freeh will be there and do all the talking. They just want you to stand there and look like a hero.”

  “No mention of what we saw?”

  “No, not a word about the Ghouls, not even speculation about whirling dust. The last thing we need is to have the media go after us because we claim we were attacked by some weird balls of dust called into the barn by a couple of psychopaths. As for the boys, it doesn’t matter what they say. If the media asks us about it, we’ll just shake our heads, look distressed and sympathetic. It will be a twenty-four-hour wonder, then it’ll be over. And the FBI will be heroes. That sure feels good.”

  Savich said as he rubbed his hands up and down his wife’s back, “But there was something very strange in there, sir, something that made the hair stand up on my head.”

  “Get a grip, Savich. We’ve got the Tuttle brothers, or rather we’ve got one brother dead and one sister whose arm was just amputated at the shoulder. The last thing we need is a dose of the supernatural.”

  “You coul
d maybe call me Mulder?”

  “Yeah, right. Hey, I just realized that Sherlock here has red hair, just like Scully.”

  Savich and Sherlock rolled their eyes and followed their boss from the men’s room.

  The boys claimed they’d seen the Ghouls, could speak of nothing else but how Agent Savich had put a bullet right in the middle of one and made them whirl out of the barn. But the boys were so tattered and pathetic, very nearly incoherent, that indeed, they weren’t believed, even by their parents.

  One reporter asked Savich if he’d seen any ghouls and Savich just said, “Excuse me, what did you say?”

  Jimmy Maitland was right. That was the end of it.

  Savich and Sherlock played with Sean for so long that evening that he finally fell asleep in the middle of his favorite finger game, Hide the Camel, a graham cracker smashed in his hand. That night at two o’clock in the morning, the phone rang. Savich picked it up, listened, and said, “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  He slowly hung up the phone and looked over at his wife, who’d managed to prop herself up on her elbow.

  “It’s my sister, Lily. She’s in the hospital. It doesn’t look good.”

  2

  Hemlock Bay, California

  Bright sunlight poured through narrow windows. Her bedroom windows were wider, weren’t they? Surely they were cleaner than this. No, wait, she wasn’t in her bedroom. A vague sort of panic jumped her, then fell away. She didn’t feel much of anything now, just a bit of confusion that surely wasn’t all that important, just a slight ache in her left arm at the IV line.

  IV line?

  That meant she was in a hospital. She was breathing; she could feel the oxygen tickling her nose, the tubes irritating her. But it was reassuring. She was alive. But why shouldn’t she be alive? Why was she surprised?

  Her brain felt numb and empty, and even the emptiness was hazy. Maybe she was dying and that’s why they’d left her alone. Where was Tennyson? Oh, yes, he’d gone to Chicago two days before, some sort of medical thing. She’d been glad to see him go, relieved, just plain solidly relieved that she wouldn’t have to hear his calm, soothing voice that drove her nuts.

  A white-coated man with a bald head, a stethoscope around his neck, came into the room. He leaned down right into her face. “Mrs. Frasier, can you hear me?”

  “Oh, yes. I can even see the hairs in your nose.”

  He straightened, laughed. “Oh, that’s too close then. Now that my nose hairs aren’t in the way, how do you feel? Any pain?”

  “No, I can barely feel my brain. I feel vague and stupid.”

  “That’s because of the morphine. You could be shot in the belly, get enough morphine, and you wouldn’t even be pissed at your mother-in-law. I’m your surgeon, Dr. Ted Larch. Since I had to remove your spleen—and that’s major abdominal surgery—we’ll keep you on a nice, steady dose of morphine until this evening. We’ll begin to lighten up on it after that. Then we’ll get you up to see how you’re doing, get your innards working again.”

  “What else is wrong with me?”

  “Let me give you the short version. First, let me promise you that you’ll be all right. As for having no spleen, nothing bad should happen in the long run because of that. An adult doesn’t really need his spleen. However, you will have all the discomfort of surgery—pain for several days. You’ll have to be careful about when and what you eat, and as I said, we’ll have to get your system working again.

  “You have a concussion, two bruised ribs, some cuts and abrasions, but you’ll live. Nothing that should cause any scarring. You’re doing splendidly, given what happened.”

  “What did happen?”

  Dr. Larch was silent for a moment, his head tilted a bit to one side. Sun was pouring in through the window and gave his bald head a bright shine. He said slowly, studying her face, “You don’t remember?”

  She thought and thought until he lightly touched his fingers to her forearm. “No, don’t try to force it. You’ll just give yourself a headache. What is the last thing you do remember, Mrs. Frasier?”

  Again she thought, and finally she said slowly, “I remember leaving my house in Hemlock Bay. That’s where I live, on Crocodile Bayou Avenue. I remember I was going to drive to Ferndale to deliver some medical slides to a Dr. Baker. I remember I didn’t like driving on 211 when it was nearly dark. That road is scary and those redwoods tower over you and surround you and you start feeling like you’re being buried alive.” She stopped, and he saw frustration building and interrupted her.

  “No, that’s all right. An interesting metaphor with those redwoods. Now, everything will probably all come back to you in time. You were in an accident, Mrs. Frasier. Your Explorer hit a redwood dead on. Now, I’m going to call in another doctor.”

  “What is his specialty?”

  “He’s a psychiatrist.”

  “Why do I need…” Now she frowned. “I don’t understand. A psychiatrist? Why?”

  “Well, it seems that you possibly could have driven into that redwood on purpose. No, don’t panic, don’t worry about a thing. Just rest and build up your strength. I’ll see you later, Mrs.Frasier. If you begin to feel any pain in the next couple of hours, just hit your button and a nurse will pump some more morphine into your IV.”

  “I thought the patient could administer the morphine when needed.”

  He was stumped for a moment, she saw it clearly. He said, “I’m sorry, but we can’t give you that.”

  “Why?” Her voice was very soft.

  “Because there is a question of attempted suicide. We can’t take the chance that you’d pump yourself full of morphine and we couldn’t bring you back.”

  She looked away from him, toward the window, where the sun was shining in so brightly.

  “All I remember is last evening. What day is it? What time of day?”

  “It’s late Thursday morning. You’ve been going in and out for a while now. Your accident was last evening.”

  “So much missing time.”

  “It will be all right, Mrs. Frasier.”

  “I wonder about that,” she said, nothing more, and closed her eyes.

  • Dr. Russell Rossetti stopped for a moment just inside the doorway and looked at the young woman who lay so still on the narrow hospital bed. She looked like a princess who’d kissed the wrong frog and been beaten up, major league. Her blond hair was mixed with flecks of blood and tangled around bandages. She was thin, too thin, and he wondered what she was thinking right now, right this minute.

  Dr. Ted Larch, the surgeon who’d removed her spleen, had told him she didn’t remember a thing about the accident. He’d also said he didn’t think she’d tried to kill herself. She was just too “there,” he’d said. The meathead.

  Ted was a romantic, something weird for a surgeon to be. Of course she’d tried to kill herself. Again. No question. It was classic.

  “Mrs. Frasier.”

  Lily slowly turned her head at the sound of a rather high voice she imagined could whine when he didn’t get his way, a voice that was right now trying to sound soothing, all sorts of inviting, but not succeeding.

  She said nothing, just looked at the overweight man—on the tall side, very well dressed in a dark, gray suit, with lots of curly black hair, a double chin, and fat, very white fingers—who walked into the room. He came to stand too close to the bed.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dr. Rossetti. Dr. Larch told you I would be coming to see you?”

  “You’re the psychiatrist?”

  “Yes.”

  “He told me, but I don’t want to see you. There is no reason.”

  Denial, he thought, just splendid. He was bored with the stream of depressed patients who simply started crying and became quickly incoherent and self-pitying, their hands held out for pills to numb them. Although Tennyson had told him that Lily wasn’t like that, he hadn’t been convinced.

  He said, all calm and smooth, “Evidently you do n
eed me. You drove your car into a redwood.”

  Had she? No, it just didn’t seem right. She said, “The road to Ferndale is very dangerous. Have you ever driven it at dusk, when it’s nearly dark?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t find you had to be very careful?”

  “Of course. However, I never wrapped my car around a redwood. The Forestry Service is looking at the tree now, to see how badly it’s hurt.”

  “Well, if I’m missing some bark, I’m sure it is, too. I would like you to leave now, Dr. Rossetti.”

  Instead of leaving, he pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down. He crossed his legs. He weaved his plump, white fingers together. She hated his hands, soft, puffy hands, but she couldn’t stop looking at them.

  “If you’ll give me just a minute, Mrs. Frasier. Do you mind if I call you Lily?”

  “Yes, I mind. I don’t know you. Go away.”

  He leaned toward her and tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away and stuck it beneath her covers.

  “You really should cooperate with me, Lily—”

  “My name is Mrs. Frasier.”

  He frowned. Usually women—any and all women—liked to be called by their first name. It made them feel that he was more of a confidant, someone they could trust. It also made them more vulnerable, more open to him.

  He said, “You tried to kill yourself the first time after the death of your child seven months ago.”

  “She didn’t just die. A speeding car hit her and knocked her twenty feet into a ditch. Someone murdered her.”

  “And you blamed yourself.”

  “Are you a parent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t you blame yourself if your child died and you weren’t with her?”

  “No, not if I wasn’t driving the car that hit her.”

  “Would your wife blame herself?”

  Elaine’s face passed before his mind’s eye, and he frowned. “Probably not. All she would do is cry. She is a very weak woman, very dependent. But that isn’t the point, Mrs. Frasier.” It wasn’t. He would be free of Elaine very soon now, thank God.